Adventist Review Podcasts

WHEN THERE’S NO FIX (August 18, 2023)

A husband slipping in the door with a bouquet of red roses trailing behind him.

A six year-old artfully arranging the remaining cookies in the jar to make it seem none have been taken.

A believer creeping quietly to church to sit in the back row and promise years of future faithfulness.

In our core, we hope to somehow appease those we have offended. We bring gifts; we rearrange the facts to diminish our responsibility; we promise to be better in the future. We assume that we won’t be welcome as we are.

But when we meet the God whose rightful expectations we have most offended, He is nothing like the angry deity we expected. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:16-17).

This is the mystery of grace—that God doesn’t act on impulse or through vengeance, but plans to actively restore those whom sin and pride have separated from Him.  “God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins” (Rom 3:24).

We are amazed: we do not understand.  It’s not what we would have done to those who offended us. But then, God says of Himself: “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isa 55:9).

Grace restores what we can’t fix, and renews our lifeline to the God who deeply loves us.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

NOTHING TO OFFER (August 11, 2023)

Taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Giving money to a homeless man at the corner. Choosing fruit instead of ice cream for dessert.  

All good things—but none will change your standing with God. 

Rising at 4:00 a.m. to pray and meditate. Attending weekly worship services. Contributing 10 percent of your income to the work of ministry. 

All good things—but none will change your standing with God.  

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Rom 2:8).  

The good things grace inspires us to do are not the things that save us. Our forever destiny is assured only by trusting in what Jesus has done for us by laying down His life to pay the penalty for our sins.  “But God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by His blood, will we be saved through Him from the wrath of God” (Rom 5:8-9).

So what good thing may we do to ensure our happiness both now and forever? “Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent’” (John 6:29).

Grace calls us to receive the gift we cannot earn. Our acts of love are simply tokens of our praise. 

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

WORDWISE (August 04, 2023)

Hot words, cold words. 

Red words, blue words. 

My words, your words.  

Old words, new words.   

Every day we arrange the 25,000 words we know in unique and highly personalized combinations. With words, we express deep sorrow and loss, as well as shining hope and love. We describe the past with words that show how different it was from our day, and we even invent new words to imagine futures for which no current words will do. 

Words are the building blocks of thought; the scribbled bits of genius on a page; the last, despairing expressions of those who have lost hope.  

And so, among the many figures in the mind of God, He entered human experience through the very language we employ: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  

In Jesus are united the two great words we find impossible to keep together—“grace” and “truth.” In God’s unbounded vocabulary, we can be both fully known and fully loved.  And He always has the last word. 

So we stay in “grace and truth.” -Bill Knott

BELOW THE SURFACE (July 28, 2023)

When we add all our compliments to all the things we wish were true, there’s still so much we’re glad the world doesn’t know. 

Deep within, we know the truth about the real lives we live—the tempers that we can’t control; the people we’ve tried to control; the passions that seem far beyond control.  Our hearts are heavy with indictments. We break our vows; we hurt our friends; we fail to do the good we could. 

“There is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” (Rom 7:23-24).  

And from the vast abundance of His grace, the Father speaks to our distress. “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart” (Eze 36:26).  

The promise of new life—within—brings all God’s goodness to us.  We cannot save ourselves, and Jesus loves to save us. We cannot fix ourselves, so He rebuilds what pride and lust have broken.  

Grace meets the fears we cannot speak, the brokenness we sought to hide, the self-accusing words we use to motivate ourselves. God’s heart of love will heal us yet. 

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

BEYOND SELF-HELP (July 21, 2023)

When we reduce our belief in God to moral tasks we should accomplish, we merely add another tedious volume to our unread self-help library.  

Praying for the sick; giving to the poor; exercising patience with exasperating colleagues; forgiving those who badly use us—these are all lovely behaviors—and of no lasting value without grace.   

The gospel isn’t an invitation to set our moral house in order, but a declaration that Jesus left His eternal home to live with us, die for us, rise for us, and—one day soon—return for us. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).  

Before we lift a broken finger, or give a soiled bill, or try to move beyond our hatred for those who have abused us, we must hear the gospel’s kind yet thundering announcement:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8-9). 

Grace is what God has done. Gracious is what we may yet become—through grace. 

So stay in grace.  -Bill Knott

GRACE AMONG THE HOURS (July 14, 2023)

When hard rain rattles the window panes three hours before unwelcome dawn; when the first thought of the day is no brighter than the last thought hours before; when the staleness of unchangeable routine offers only more of the same, more of the rain—grace renews the mind.

When we dread the icy comments in the cubicles or at the frozen water cooler; when the anger seethes while helplessness makes our haggard hearts grow cold; when the best thought of the day is that it will finally be over—grace renews the mind.  

Redemption isn’t only for those starlit hours when grand and beautiful change starts happening to us. God’s grace accompanies us in hundreds of quite ordinary hours when children fret and spouses quarrel and nothing in our world advances our fond hopes for love or comfort or success.

And so the gospel urges and invites: “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom 12:2).

Grace is for all hours, all challenges, all rainy days. There is no moment when God’s goodness and affection isn’t gladly, fully offered to us, for us, in us. “His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7).

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

HEALED—AND HEALED AGAIN (July 07, 2023)

So let’s admit it: we are afraid because bad things have happened in our past, and everything in us shudders at ever being hurt again. Life’s all about negotiating risk, we say, and so we bravely sanctify our fears with strategies to hide the dread that we might end unloved and all alone.

But Jesus says, “My grace is enough for you” (2 Cor. 12:9, CEB)—enough for all our hidden wounds and public failures, enough for all the times when we’ve concluded that we can be either well-loved OR well-known, but never both. 

Grace is a healing antidote to fear, repairing and rebuilding whatever sin has poisoned, blighted or corroded.

The worst that can be said of us turns out—amazingly—to be a gorgeous anthem to God’s never-ending, always-reaching love.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

GATHERED BY GRACE (june 30, 2023)

Whenever broken lives start mending; wherever someone is set free; when the barriers get lifted and the desperate hear good news, hope for new community is born.

Frightened people long for holding. Lonely people seek for friends. Those whose story was forgotten want a place they can be heard. Grieving persons pray that someday they may learn to laugh again.

In God’s kindness, mercy moves us toward the others saved by grace. What we need, their stories give us: what they need, our hands can bring.

 “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).

Sin demands our isolation: grace invites us to a circle where we gain and give, and give and gain. Gathered ‘round us are the people who will hold us as God holds us.

Find the circle you were meant for. Find the love that gives you hope.

And you will stay in grace. – Bill Knott

CHOOSING GRACE (June 23, 2023)

Our hearts are subtle and mysterious realms, swept over by the storms of grand emotions.

Why is it that the same offensive words from the lips of a friend can be more easily forgiven than when uttered by a person outside the orbit of our love?

Love holds within it the quality of grace, both when we receive it from the Father, and when we extend it to His children. God chose to love us “while we were yet sinners”—to extend His grace in spite of our offensiveness. But we routinely show that grace to only those who love us in return.

The difference lies in God’s amazing decision to love the entire world as though we had always been His friends. He sovereignly declares that all His children can also be His friends because of Jesus’ sacrifice: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor 5:19).

Can loving God expand the orbit of our love? How do we learn God’s graciousness for those who never earned our care—or even wounded us in spite?

We pray for God’s own love to take from us our stony hearts, and give us His great, principled affection for those who still offend us. God’s daily miracle of grace gives each of us—and everyone—the fullness of forgiving love.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

GOOD FOR ALL (June 16, 2023)

Does fear sometimes persuade you that you aren’t eligible for the gospel’s promises of peace and restoration? Consider then, the vast variety of souls who found God’s grace when they weren’t looking for it. 

A Jericho prostitute. A leprous general. A corrupt tax collector. A woman desperate for a child. A cultured religious leader. A demon-tortured wretch who gashed himself.  A dying thief. A cheating king. 

 

The list goes on and on, encompassing men and women in every imaginable life situation—the wealthy and the poor; the aged and the children; the slaves and those who imprisoned them; the doubting and the faithful; the obedient and those who broke God’s law with wild abandon. 

 

“For God has revealed His grace for the salvation of all people” (Titus 2:11). 

 

The Bible is, above all else, a story of hope for broken, wounded, foolish folks like us.  We were the people sitting in darkness on whom new light has dawned. “In Christ was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:4). “God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:8). 

Grace tells us that we’re loved. Love teaches us to hope. Hope gives us wings to fly to faith.  Faith coaxes us to trust in grace. 

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott